#348 Backstory of the Poem “THE OPTIMIST TAKES A PERSONALITY TEST” by Kimberly Ann Priest

Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? This poem is the first poem in my new book The Optimist Shelters in Place from Harbor Editions coming out at the end of March. It’s a book of what we are calling “pandemic poetry” that follows the day-to-day routine of a middle-aged divorce woman during the onset of shutdown orders when the world was reeling from the news that a deadly virus was sweeping the globe. As with most harrowing circumstances in my life, I turned to writing poetry as a means to process reality and break it down into a digestible narrative. As my past therapist has stated, I’m a fast processor, and poetry seems to be one of the best ways for me to work through emotion and circumstance.

https://www.smallharborpublishing.com/

This poem became the first of a series of “optimist” poems that wrote themselves rather quickly. I finished the poems in two weeks, and like all my chapbooks, barely changed a word or phrase or line break upon completion. So, the poem that you are looking at is a first draft. I can’t recall if I changed a word or two. I believe I altered line breaks throughout the book when done, but that’s it. Often, I write a chapbook all the way through without stopping and then go back to make any adjustments on individual poems. In a way, the chapbooks are like one long poem. They are always a whole narrative, linked.

credit and copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest.

The prompts for this poem, as well as the others, were my plants. I had about thirty at the time. They all had names, usually botanists or writers. One was named for a friend who had died and another for a man I loved briefly. I have always talked to my plants and considered them my “family” since I am that middle-aged divorcee in the book. In lockdown, I began expressing my feelings of alienation, grief, confinement, and loneliness to my plants. Then, rather quickly, I decided to write about it. Thus began the book of pandemic and plants.

credit and copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest.

Finally, the title of this poem was inspired by a visit from my daughter near the onset of the pandemic. She was obsessed with personality tests and had me do more than I care to remember. It was fun to accommodate her obsession though. I was a seven on the Enneagram, hence the “sevens” in the last stanza.

https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test

Where were you when you started to actually write the poem?  And please describe the place in great detail. I was in my apartment. Michigan had just gone into strict lockdown. I’m not there anymore. It was a half-underground apartment in what was predominantly student apartments in East Lansing. The walls were an off-white, and the carpet was tan. Dark cupboards, not enough windows, but lots of décor to make it homey and bright. I love to make a space cozy, artistic, and livable.

In my youth, I had considered going to school for interior design. I put my whole heart into interiors and know how to replicate an Anthropologie Home catalogue with pieces found at Goodwill and roadsides. Most of my furniture are pieces I found for free or cheap and refurbished myself. All those pieces are now in storage, but they were in that apartment along with books on plants, classic movie stars, Eastern philosophy, and poetry; strung moon lights; professional photos of my kids when they were young; a whicker coffee table; a chair perfectly suited to my small size that I had reupholstered in tweed gray; too many coffee mugs; and, of course, plants in vintage 1960s pots literally everywhere.

Credit and copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest

My space was smart and stylish. Outside the weather was cold but trying to shift from a frigid winter to spring to summer. The crab apple tree in view of my window was budding.

What month and year did you start writing this poem? April 2020

Kimberly Ann Priest in April of 2020. Copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest

Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version?  And can you share them with us? No, all lines remained.

What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? The whole book considers the “epidemic” of loneliness in the United States, which the pandemic amplified. We are so connected via media sources, but so disconnected in our personal lives. I wanted this amplification to come through. How much we need each other. The sadness of a woman talking to her plants and feeling a sense of impending doom as she tries to reassure them that things we get better. We do this all the time. Speak platitudes to others, but mostly to bolster or own sense of hope. This is all temporal, the daughter comforts. Now we know it isn’t; the pandemic rages on. But, when we are lonely and despairing, we constantly seek to keep our spirits up, even though what we say, feel, and do to lift the spirits might be burgeoning with untruths and escapism.

credit and copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest

In this poem, I want my reader to feel, through the speaker, that we are all—all—deeply in need of hope and when hope is deferred, we struggle. This is universal. Despite our many human differences, in this way we are all the same together.

credit and copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest

Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why? The part about my daughter leaving! Due to the pandemic, she finally got a job. She’d been trying unsuccessfully for months. But, suddenly, “essential” workers were needed, and she got a job as a receptionist at a nursing home. She was going to stay with me for weeks during lockdown, but the job took her away to live with her dad because it was near him. I began writing after she left. Honestly, I needed her there. But, she needed that job. I remember the sinking feeling in my body when she walked out the door and I knew I’d spend isolation very isolated.

Kimberly Ann Priest with her daughter (Left). Credit and Copyright by Kimberly Ann Priest.

Has this poem been published?  And if so where? Only one of my optimist poems was published in a journal (The Laurel Review) before it got picked up by a publisher. But, the whole book, “The Optimist Shelters in Place,” is about to be published with Small Harbor Publishing. I’m working with Allison Blevins on the cover right now which will showcase a lovely painting by Laura Page. The book debuts at the end of March.

Guest Tea Party by Laura Page.

I’m super excited! This is my first “non-trauma” book that speaks on a more universal level. You will be able to find it here: https//www.smallharborpublishing.com/chapbooks

Kimberly Ann Priest is an autistic writer, and author of Slaughter the One Bird(Sundress Publications 2021), finalist in the American Book Awards, and the chapbooks The Optimist Shelters in Place(Small Harbor Press 2022), Parrot Flower (Glass Poetry Press, 2021), Still Life(PANK 2020), and White Goat Black Sheep (FLP, 2018). She is an MFA graduate in Creative Writing from New England College, already holding an MA in English Language & Literature from Central Michigan University. A proud Michigan native, she has taught composition and creative writing courses for Michigan State University, Central Michigan University, and Alma College, and participated in local initiatives to increase awareness concerning sexual assault, survivorship, and healing through artistic expression. Her writing carefully observes the intersections of gender violence, narrative identities, embodiment, trauma, motherhood, and environmental issues as well as survival, wildness, joy & grief. Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals including North Dakota Quarterly, Salamander, Borderlands, RELIEF, RiverSedge, The Meadow, RHINO, and The Berkeley Poetry Review. She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations and is a winner of theHeartland Poetry Prize in the New Poetry from the Midwest Anthology by New American Press (2019).  She served as a volunteer book reviewer for NewPages from 2015-2020, an editorial intern with Sundress Publications in 2019, and a summer intern for Black Earth Institute in 2020. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor  at Michigan State University, associate poetry editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, and the James Tolen Writer in Residence at Writer’s House PGH.

https://www.kimberlyannpriest.com/

Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links can be found at the very end of the below feature:

http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html

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